Karn,
The adventure continues.
I am also excited about Dr. Johnson’s research after reading his interview in Acres, USA this past summer. I have been continually trying to improve my composting methods over the seasons, and decided to also try some Johnson-Su Bioreactors.
As I write this, I’ve filled several Bioreactors this season and plan to fill approximately 10 of them as soon as po

I agree with the above assessments, particularly Alan's Steiner quote.
I've been reading Holistic Resource Management by Allan Savory the past couple weeks. If you plot both the increase in knowledge and deterioration of the health of our natural systems on a graph together (as he has done in Fig 4.1), you see a direct correlation. I can't see this trend reversing without adopting a holistic a

Elliot-
The neem should be mixed with the soap and mixed vigorously to emulsify. Only after that should it be added to water. From my experience, at that point, after emulsification, it doesn't matter the water temp. Cold water works great! Hard water is another issue..
Nick Segner

We had a similar issue, as we have very hard water as well.
Water temp is not the problem, however. Once emulsified with the soap, we mix the neem directly into 100 gallons of cold water and it does not come back out of solution.
We are fortunate to have two wells, each in it's own aquifer. One is very high in nitrates, the other very high in minerals. So we just switched to using high nit

Hi Karen!
Another Oly-Pen'er- welcome!
Yes, I think you're correct: WSU says that cherry can host the malevolent fungus and I suspect alder would as well. I have many red alder next to the orchard also, in poor health (they are dying due to lack of water since they closed the irrigation ditch here). Could be a major source of our inoculum.
And yes, two incredibly wet winters in a row f

Here's the deal: After three seasons of chipping up our coppice-able hedges, pruning the fruit trees back 1/3 each season, and diminishing chip deliveries from the power utility district; we've reached a situation we call Peak Chip.
The new game plan: prioritize some rows to receive the mulch from our haying and limited ongoing chipping of prunings. The rest of the orchard will be "hapha

Jim-
Hi from the Olympics. Vashon, where you are, also is a gorgeous place and with quite the orcharding history from what I understand. Only made it over there once so far, to pick up the Avalon Apple Press from the workshop at Meadow Creature there- great product.
To task: Anthracnose. Yeah from what I understand, you wouldn't want to be using copper or lime-sulpher this time of year on t

Too bad the Pink Pearl isn't makin' it in zone 3 there - that's a fine apple! Alpenfire, the local cidery to whom we sell our apples, makes a fine single varietal cider out of the Hidden Rose, called "Glow". Not sure it's marketed out east, but grab a bottle if you can. Much of the color remains post fermentation.
Nick Segner

Thanks, as always, Michael, for the info!
We are hoping to get a masonry stove set up by next winter so I'll direct those brown-rot-worthy materials thataway.
Fascinating about that soil microbe synergy. Truly most of the work is being done for us, for free, unless we manage to mess it up..
While everyone else is fixated on Star Wars 8 or whatever I'll be looking for spoilers on that ne

All I dream about is chips. I literally fantasize about taking my front end loader around in the night and loading up other peoples' piles I see on the country road we live on (don't tell my neighbors).
The mulch makes perfect forest-edge-ecology-sense to me and I delight at the state of our soil when I'm brushing some back to let the chickens at the abundant worms underneath. At the soil lev

I've sprayed all my fall Fatty Acid Knockdown sprays and the compost teas and now frost is showing up in our very nutty-smelling orchard and it's time to think about winterizing.
Glad you posted this. One question-after researching RV Antifreeze toxicity, etc and thinking about my precious microbes that I may spray again during a warm spell this winter or early spring: Are you using the Propy

Mike-
1. Cheers!
2. So, that spray was over our 0.9 acres of apples (approx 620 trees on M9 and M26), and I hit the pears as well to help with overwintering scab conidia.
3. Ok, so our eventual goal is to make some stellar ramial wood-chip compost to begin using our own composts (with native fungi) for the compost teas. We've got some slow-cooking right now, not yet ready. So what we'

Nope!
Is that test something one could do at home?
This spring, we took a class by Peg Schafer of the Chinese Medicinal Herb farm in Paloma, CA. She mentioned many times Thin-Layer Chromatography (TLC) and High Performance Thin Layer Chromatography (HPTLC) in evaluation of the medicinal quality of the Chinese herbs she is growing and marketing.
So, that's evaluation of roots/leaves/bark

Thanks for your response, Tim!
We sprayed the 3.6 gals neem and 4 gallons liquid fish in 180 gallons on Tuesday, boy what a strong smell to the orchard! Hit it it today with fungally-pretreated Alaskan humate compost tea (verified on the soil microscope and some really good looking thick brown, segmented mycelia in there!!). Also added soluable kelp and an OMRI product called Solu-PLKS as furt

I'll throw in my 2 cents - why not go for AACT? Of course there's the expense of the equipment but you could feasibly use a 5 gallon pail or 55 gallon drum to brew in, buy a pump and diffuser with which you could develop a sufficient agitation/airation system, obtain a relitively simple 400x light microscope .. and then use your own woodsy compost and from there on out the cost of the brew is mea

Let me revive this thread, as Anthracnose does this time of year (though the threads won't show til next season..)
So, we hosted a commercial hard cider orcharding workshop this summer (thanks to WSU-EX who had some grant monies available) which brought in the guy we obtained a TV and VCR for, to watch his now 30-year-old pruning VHS tape.. Gary Moulton.
What Gary told us was that the ext

Claude -
Thanks for the quick reply!
That's what I feared. Oh well, I'll have to find another way to kill off the friends who drink too much of my precious cider... (Hah!)
Seriously, though, most drops land in our thick hay mulch and we sort two times before pressing and also wash the apples briefly in water just prior to pressing. Didn't use sulfites last year (our first season on th

I'd like to pipe in on this thread especially since Claude may see this and I always value Todd's opinions..
What's your collective take on E Coli risk with dropped (windfall picked every other day) fruit?
We sell cider fruit to a local hard cider maker in Port Townsend that doesn't use sulfites. They will only take tree picked fruit from us. Now that's fine but I'm a little more adventuro

So cool, Claude!
Die Österreich is one of my favorite countries I've visited in Europe. Very amiable people as well. Good to see Perry is flourishing there, albeit under the radar. Great pics!
A couple questions - which varieties are common for Perry making there? How were the distilled products- are they essentially pear brandies?

Paul-
Excellent information! I had actually been thinking that what you just did would be a great idea. That is- I'd love to compare "orchard year" calendars with other growers to compare and contrast. Maybe we could start a new thread on this. I don't actually have much to contribute yet (we finally starting keeping records these past weeks after deciding to get organized). But

I'm putting up a new thread to see if there are any others out there making his/her own aerated compost teas (rather than EM/Bokashi). If so, I'd like to start a discussion on this process and on qualitative analysis of AACT by light microscope.
We have been making our tea with a 25 gallon Growing Solutions setup. So far we have been learning the process with the help of books by Dr. Elaine I

The past couple weeks we're seeing scab rearing it's ugly head in the European Pears. Seeing little in the apples still (compared to last year). This is encouraging. We are continuing AACT sprays weekly (with comfrey/nettle and horsetail when we can find it) throughout the summer. Our attention has been turned to likely fireblight.
Tim- I am humbled myself at the 70 year old man (now 92) w

Good point.
I had a conversation with a friend last year about this. I hoped if pricing could account for Brix readings that it would be a good way to pitch truly quality produce to consumers that care about nutrient density.
My friend pointed out that it's easy to skew results when it comes to Brix. One easy way is once (say spinach) dehydrates a bit it will naturally show a higher solub

Way out here, three hours west of Seattle, we actually have had a somewhat similar spring. Very, very dry until it rained a couple days in a row on the cusp of June. Also, quite cool until recent weeks. In fact almost the same temperatures as we had over "winter".. People began mowing lawns in January this year when they typically would start in February. For a recent Minnesota transpl

Interesting. I'll start taking more Brix readings and begin to document my observations. In response to Brian's question on how to sample leaves for Brix: modified vice grips. Available online. I'd like to get myself a pair.

Michael -
I share your sentiments. I'm glad, however, to see this forum back up and running as it's a great resource for fledgling orchardists, such as myself, as we struggle to deal with other kinds of bugs!

Cameron-
I'm an Oly Pen local and a big fan of your ciders. Great stuff, especially that Belgian yeast one you just did. We just bought 10 acres with one acre of apples in Sequim area and we have approx 20 KBs. We have black rot type problems on KB (and throughout our 260 varieties in a neglected orchard) and I'd be really interested to know, once you hear back from WSU-Extension, what exactly

We are in Western WA and the hard cider business is indeed thriving here which is great to see. I saw an article that says production is doubling annually here. Apples coming in from Eastern WA where they are mass produced sell (seconds or thirds most likely) for a whopping 9 cents/lb. And that's organic apples! Of course those are dessert and not cider varieties. We have a unique situation wh

Hi guys
Sorry, it took me a couple extra days to track down a functioning laptop to re-watch the DVD as I don't have a TV (kill your television!!)
Here is that basic synopsis from the Permaculture Orchard of Stefan's technique for pruning dwarf or semi dwarf trees:
Stefan asks "do you want a tree?" gesturing with his arms raised up in a U-shape, "..or do you want a fruit